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| You gotta turn them away but then..... how can you? |
Well, today the migrant caravan, 400 strong, is going to try and muscle across the Tijuana border bridge. Pass the popcorn, bubba..... what a show it's gonna be. Trump and Sessions firmly say NO. Yet the mexican government let them come on through from central america. Man..... what a sticky situation.
I rode a border train jammed with "illegals" making a run at a better life back in 1999. I was wandering around Mexico, just cured from stage 4B cancer, a bit shellshocked myself: riding buses to this city and that, staying in cheap $5 to $8 a night hotels, etc.. Looking back, I was relatively poor myself yet it was one of the most carefree and enjoyable life periods I can remember.
So I hopped a 2nd class train in San Luis Potosi intending to get off 150 miles north, in the desert village of Estacion de Catorce, where I intended to walk out into the desert and do some of the local peyote (which is yet another tale in which your humble narrator eventually got arrested by the local cops).
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| When it sucks as bad as it does for the impoverished in central america.... |
Anyway, while waiting in the cavernous, old stone station in San Luis Potosi, $4 ticket in hand, I saw that a lot of the other folks waiting were carrying makeshift packs and many were wearing three or more shirts. I realized it was ALL THEY HAD and they were making a run for the border one of the cheapest ways they could.
In pulled the train... a old classic, puffing black smoke loudly, with about 8 passenger cars that had seen better days attached. It backed up to our platform and it was already jammed with people and I mean JAMMED..... standing room only inside. All poor people. But pretty darn civil, despite the jostling and resettling to get arranged. No way was I going to ride cooped up inside so I wandered back to the very rear and saw that on the last cars rear, open platform there was some space and just a handful of guys back there in the roughly 8X6 square foot space with steel rails around it. How bad could it be given I was supposedly to get off in the desert in maybe 5-6 more hours?
The guys made room for me and I crashed on the floor, resting against the back wall of the train car compartment. I got up and stashed my big pack on the luggage rack just inside the rear door and sat back down (no, no one messed with my pack the whole time... you get a feel for what is and is not dangerous after awhile down here). My fellow open air travelers spanned the age spectrum and I chatted one young guy up, a traveling musician named Elliot with his guitar, who later went into the cars to make a few pesos singing (and even later walked out into the desert with me to find some peyote buttons).
The train eased on off and dust lightly swirled around us as we headed out into the desert just about sunset. As per the usual high desert routine it started to chill right off but we were relatively protected from the wind and made do. I was amazed overall at the peoples lack of any desperate aires. A few vendors snaked through the cars yelling out about their buckets of tamales they had to sell, or perhaps a warm coke, or a bag of chips. Most folks seemed resolutely determined to make this happen and thus..... so be it, let's get on with it. Even a bit, dare I say it? Jolly. A old man pulled out a harmonica and we all shut up and listened to him play as darkness fell. It wasn't too comfy but I was a lot younger back then so dealt with it, as all of us did.
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| 19 years ago these kinda border hoppers were rare..... |
